Apple Relaunched the HomePod Two Years Ago Today

[Bogstandard]

I fell for the hype on the original as I was without a hifi at the time.
Now they sit unused in storage.
Firstly because the Siri is unreliable.
Secondly because I repaired a pair of real hifi speakers, replaced a lost amplifier and quickly discovered how awful the homepods actually sound.

 

[throAU]

had two OG units, one of them started crackling and making weird noises (no doubt dead caps) so it got disposed of, the other one is still kicking - and every time I listen to it I am still surprised how good they sound.

Also have a couple of minis scattered around for HomeKit response (which is hit and miss).

Want to refresh the OG one with a pair of new full size units but its a little way down the list of priorities right now.

 

[wanha]

I really like HomePods, but - as many commenters have pointed out - there are some reasons why they're not a bigger hit:

1. Siri - it's terrible, but hopefully LLM's will enable Siri to finally become the assistant we always thought she should and could be

2. Reliability - the many network issues for a product like this are torturesque

3. Is Apple really committed to this product category? Seeing as the original HomePod was first discontinued before being brought back and it seems to take a LOOOOONG time between HW updates, I worry that speakers are a product category that Apple may the pull the plug on at any time and it makes me reticent of investing in them.

They look and sound amazing, though, and I hope the above gets fixed/clarified in the not too distant future.

 

[NeXTCube]

Had one of the first gen HomePods - got one and a Sonos One SL about the same time to do a bake-off. The HomePod worked fine as a wireless speaker, but was irritated by a couple of things:

1. Poor Siri functionality - the behavior was very inconsistent with Siri when I had my phone in the same room, and it just made it irritating rather than helpful. We also had multiple Siri users in the house and that was a pain to set up and it never seemed to actually work.
2. It 'took over' whatever audio source you were listening to - e.g., if you were playing a podcast on your phone, and wanted to listen to it on the HomePod, you were suddenly listening to the podcast on the HomePod and lost control over what was being played on your phone. This disjointedness was what drove me to give up on the HomePod.

While the HomePod sounded better than the Sonos One, it didn't sound twice as good but cost twice as much. In the end wound up selling the HomePod and going with Sonos for my wireless speakers. The 'smart speaker' thing looks cool in TV commercials but just isn't that useful; I somehow have lucked out and have not encountered the huge litany of problems other people have had with Sonos - probably because I only launch the Sonos app when I get a new speaker and use AirPlay the rest of the time.

 

[TommyBoy5]

Swapped out Alexa after 7 years with a new HomePod and three satellites. First thing we were amazed at was that this thing BOOMS. Music sounded like music again and not some AM radio playing music. Initial setup was a bit wonky. Using Siri is no big deal for us. Gets us what we want most of the time.

And all the crappy ads coming from using Alexa miraculously stopped. Sure we're almost purely in the Apple Ecosystem with all of our devices (all Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple watches) and Apple is surely watching us just as much - but it's not as obvious LOL!